Around the Metropolitan Museum: Central Park and Fifth Avenue
The museum stands on park land between 79th and 84th Street. The obelisk is behind it, the Gilded Age houses are across the avenue, and Museum Mile starts at its door.
The Metropolitan Museum is not next to Central Park. It is inside it. The building occupies park land on the east side, between 79th and 84th Street, and its front door faces Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street. Walk out of the Great Hall and round the building, and within a few minutes you are standing beside an Egyptian obelisk carved around 1425 BCE.
That geography is the whole point of this page. Two walks start at the Met's door: one goes west into the park, the other runs up and down Fifth Avenue past the houses that the Gilded Age built facing it. Put either of them next to a museum visit and you have a day that needs no subway. The guided versions of both walks mostly run about two hours, which leaves the museum a full morning or a full afternoon.
The parcel the museum stands on has always been park land. The Central Park Conservancy, which manages the park, puts the museum "on the east side of Central Park between 79th and 84th Street", and lists it among the park's own locations, the same way it lists Belvedere Castle or the Reservoir.
So when people ask whether the Met is in Central Park, the answer is a flat yes. What they usually want to know is more practical: how far is the park from the galleries? Nowhere is far. The obelisk known as Cleopatra's Needle sits on a rocky knoll directly behind the museum, and the Conservancy describes it as standing "between the Great Lawn and the Met Museum". By our estimate Belvedere Castle is about ten minutes away on foot and Bethesda Terrace about fifteen.
Yet almost nobody sells a day that starts from the museum. Of the 30 walking tours in this section, 19 start at the south end of the park, between 58th and 60th Street, about 23 blocks from the museum. Two start within four blocks of it: one on the Met's steps, one at 78th Street. If you are already at the museum, the sections below show what is within walking distance and how to fit it around the galleries.
Every tour in this section is a walk, and they all sit on the two pages below.
The calendar helps more than people expect. The museum closes on Wednesdays, and none of the 30 walks in this section says it skips that day. So Wednesday is the natural day for the outdoor half, and Friday or Saturday, when the Met stays open until 9 pm, are the easiest days to do both.
Private Fifth Avenue Gilded Age Mansions Walk, Plaza Hotel to 92nd Street
Your own guide for up to 15 people, from the Pulitzer Fountain past Mrs. Astor's lost mansion, the Carnegie house and the Warburg mansion at 92nd Street.
Private Gilded Age Mansions Walk on Fifth Avenue with a Local Guide
Your group alone, up to 30 people, with a local guide and earpieces: two hours from the Sherman statue past the Frick and the last Millionaire's Row mansions.
Private Gilded Age Walking Tour of Fifth Avenue: New York High Society
Your own licensed guide and group of up to 15 on a private two-hour walk from Grand Army Plaza up Millionaire's Row to the Cooper Hewitt mansion.
Private or Semi-Private Central Park Walking Tour, 2.5 Hours
Book a guide for your own party or join a semi-private group of up to 12 for 2.5 hours past Bethesda Terrace, Bow Bridge, the Great Lawn and the Dakota.
Secret Places of Central Park: North Woods, Forts and Conservatory Garden
A historian leads a 3.25-mile walk through the park above 100th Street: the Ravine, a grotto waterfall, War of 1812 fort sites and the Conservatory Garden.
Upper East Side Architecture Walking Tour: Gilded Age Mansions to the Guggenheim
Build Tours reads the Upper East Side building by building, from the Frick mansion and the Met facade to Wright's Guggenheim, with headsets for every guest.
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